Green tea has often been purported to help people lose weight. One of the reasons people tend to believe in green tea for weight loss is the fact that Asian cultures, those who consume the most green tea, are less likely to be overweight than other cultures.
The Health Benefits of Green Tea
Green tea is filled with substances called polyphenols. These polyphenols are good for the body because they kill free radicals. Free radicals are by-products of the digestive process, and they cause damage to our body’s cells.
Killing off free radicals is an important step toward preventing disease. Most all plant based foods contain anti-oxidants which kill free radicals, but none better than the polyphenols in green tea.
It is believed that green tea’s free radical killing ability may make it a powerful warrior against disease. There’s no question that green tea is good for you, but what about green tea for weight loss?
Can Green Tea Really Help You Lose Weight?
The answer is yes. There are many reasons why you should use green tea for weight loss.
Green tea has caffeine, which speeds the metabolism. And, what’s special about green tea for weight loss is that the caffeine in tea doesn’t raise the heart rate or blood pressure rate the way caffeine normally does.
This makes tea an effective way to speed up the metabolism even if you normally don’t tolerate caffeine well.
A Weight Loss Study Using Green Tea
A study by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition supports the fact that we should use green tea for weight loss for more reasons than just the caffeine. This study determined that green tea does promote help burn fat and in way greater than just the caffeine content would cause.
This study looked at a variety of men, with different lifestyles. Some were heavy and some were not. There were three groups of participants.
The first group received green tea extract with caffeine. The second group got a placebo and the third group got caffeine that did not come from green tea. During the experiment, the participants were on same diet and exercise program.
The participants who had the green tea extract had at minimum a 41% higher metabolic rate than the other participants. So, it seems that green tea for weight loss works because it burns fat in other ways too.
Green tea’s polyphenols also seem to work with other chemicals in the body to intensify fat oxidation and thermogenesis. This means that drinking green tea for weight loss creates fat burning heat in the body.
Another advantage to green tea for weight loss is the fact that green tea seems to help with our insulin levels. Green tea helps the release the carbs we eat more slowly, so our insulin stays level.
This helps reduce our chances of storing fat. So, there’s definitely reason to believe that drinking green tea for weight loss is a good idea.
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